Gifting Items

Queo · March 2017

Returning player, with a quick question.
I've talked my wife into playing, i have 21k crowns saved up. Can I buy items from the crown store, like a pet cat and gift to her?

Euant · March 2017

No. As soon as you buy something in the crown store it will be unlocked and bound to your account.

Komma · March 2017

Crowns are per account. They had talked about a gifting system some time ago but like other things it stopped getting talked about.

Coilspun · March 2017

I'd love to see a gift system but I think it'd be an opening for item sellers to exploit...

TheShadowScout · March 2017

It should not be too hard to implement. Just have one "buy as gift" option in the crown store, and then they could either let it go to a "buy for (select from friends list)" popup, or simply deliver it as an box that can be traded like those from the holiday event rewards...

Coilspun wrote: »

I'd love to see a gift system but I think it'd be an opening for item sellers to exploit...

I kinda doubt that. Those usually want to make a profit by investing time to get something, then sell it for cash, right? Crown items are bought with cash turned into crowns, if someone has cash to spend on the game, they can just buy it themselves, so why should they cut in a middleman who might want to take a percentage off the transaction?

Turelus · March 2017

Submit a support ticket asking if the Crowns can be taken from you account and the items desired unlocked on hers.

They have done this for others in the past so should be able to do it for you as well.

Queo · March 2017

Thanks Turelus, we give that a try!

SydneyGrey · March 2017

They were supposedly working on making it so we could gift store items, but we can't yet. It would be really smart for them to finish this up and get it running, because a lot of people would buy gifts for their gaming buddies.

Queo · March 2017

SydneyGrey wrote: »

They were supposedly working on making it so we could gift store items, but we can't yet. It would be really smart for them to finish this up and get it running, because a lot of people would buy gifts for their gaming buddies.

It would be, i mean i think i got every i want from the CS and now that my wife will start playing, she like ohh i want that pet and this and that... i got a ton of crowns i have no motivation to buy any more...

Dudsworth1 · March 2017

TheShadowScout wrote: »

It should not be too hard to implement. Just have one "buy as gift" option in the crown store, and then they could either let it go to a "buy for (select from friends list)" popup, or simply deliver it as an box that can be traded like those from the holiday event rewards...

Coilspun wrote: »

I'd love to see a gift system but I think it'd be an opening for item sellers to exploit...

I kinda doubt that. Those usually want to make a profit by investing time to get something, then sell it for cash, right? Crown items are bought with cash turned into crowns, if someone has cash to spend on the game, they can just buy it themselves, so why should they cut in a middleman who might want to take a percentage off the transaction?

That's not how it works. What happens is scammers will use the gift option to send people items from the cash shop with stolen credit cards. They will charge actual prices that are less than what the in game cash shop charges for them. Then once a user has payed them for their items, the scammer now has free money, and the user has cash shop items purchased through stolen credit cards. For this reason, I can understand why Zenimax would be reluctant to add a gifting option in the crown store. Other games have had this happen to them when they had a gifting option, and so they had to remove the option to prevent this from happening.

Aelthwyn · March 2017

My friend I play with and I have both really been wishing for gifting options. It would be perfect for our birthdays.

As far as scams go, couldn't they have things that would put up a red flag like a high volume of gifting to lots of random people? I mean someone re-selling items is probably going to look rather different activity-wise from someone who is actually giving gifts to friends - fewer people, people they are actually friends with in the game.

I don't know, it just seems like they would get a lot more sales if people had the opportunity to give each other gifts, and it doesn't seem like scams regarding that would be that rampant or difficult to find and stop. *shrug*

Turelus · March 2017

Aelthwyn wrote: »

My friend I play with and I have both really been wishing for gifting options. It would be perfect for our birthdays.

As far as scams go, couldn't they have things that would put up a red flag like a high volume of gifting to lots of random people? I mean someone re-selling items is probably going to look rather different activity-wise from someone who is actually giving gifts to friends - fewer people, people they are actually friends with in the game.

I don't know, it just seems like they would get a lot more sales if people had the opportunity to give each other gifts, and it doesn't seem like scams regarding that would be that rampant or difficult to find and stop. *shrug*

As I said above you can gift, you just have to go via customer support right now. It's a slower system and more paperwork on both sides but they can then see who is asking for what and why and I would imagine this helps rule out anyone on a throw away account for RMT.

Aelthwyn · March 2017

Turelus wrote: »

As I said above you can gift, you just have to go via customer support right now. It's a slower system and more paperwork on both sides but they can then see who is asking for what and why and I would imagine this helps rule out anyone on a throw away account for RMT.

May I ask where exactly one would send such a request? I'm looking at the customer support options in game and can't see any category options that seem remotely relevant to asking them to do this, no general help/questions - there's only "character issue" or "report player" or bug report forms which doesn't seem to include crown store items.